Modern soldiers and other professionals carry and utilize many portable electronic devices to perform their duties, ranging from communications equipment, vision aids (e.g., night vision goggles and binoculars), sensors, and navigation devices. Use of such portable electronic devices is only expected to grow. These devices generally utilize dedicated or device-specific batteries and generally intercommunicate using interconnecting cables, thereby adding weight and operational complexity to already-overloaded dismounts (e.g., the equipment a soldier carries when not on connected to supporting infrastructure such as a vehicle). For example, a standard dismount for a 72 hour mission often requires 70 batteries of 7 different types amounting to 16 pounds of additional weight.
As discussed above, modern professionals working in the field (e.g., soldiers and firefighters), often carry an array of electronic devices when performing their duties. These devices may include communication devices (e.g., phones and radios), navigation devices (e.g., GPS devices), lights (e.g., flashlights), vision aids (e.g., binoculars and night vision goggles), and other specialized tools. These electronic devices may have different power requirements (e.g., different operating voltages, wattages, and impedances) and therefore each generally includes a dedicated battery designed to meet the particular energy requirements of the device.
However, batteries generally require frequent charging or replacement, resulting in additional burden on logistics and training. For example, replacement and backup batteries need to be carried or stocked to replace drained units and a large number of charging systems need to be provided to recharge the dedicated batteries. In addition, the wide range of mutually incompatible types of batteries further increases logistical burden.
The electronic devices typically communicate with one another using interconnected cables. However, cables can interfere with movement, interconnects (e.g., the connectors or connection points between cables or between cables and devices) can degrade reliability, and device swaps can be time consuming and inconvenient. Fixed cable lengths and device placements are not scalable for various soldier sizes and may be incompatible with the movement habits of those soldiers.
Recent efforts in smart textiles, in which conducting wires are woven into clothing, only address cabling and power distribution. However, smart textiles provide only a partial solution because the textiles impose fixed locations on electronic devices. Furthermore, these textiles have inherent reliability issues due to the fragile interconnect wiring. Wireless solutions cannot distribute significant power to devices, have low signal transfer efficiencies, and, in many instances simply will not work in the field. Better batteries reduce weight but leave the user managing the batteries for each individual device.
Existing R&D efforts view these problems as independent, and have pursued piecemeal incremental improvements. One example of this is the Modular Universal Battery Charger (MUBC) (Thales, 2012)), which is able to use a variety of power sources, including car batteries and solar panels provides configurability and intelligence in charging. However, the Thales MUBC still requires separate charging of each device and still leaves a soldier tied in complex cabling and subject to operational disruptions to his mission.